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The Cubby Jackson Chronicles: Leaves

I’ve told this story a few times and it is now worthy of going to print.

Victoria lives in London, which is a lengthy drive from Georgetown, but I like her enough to go visit.

During reading week I went down to visit her, and the two people she lives with; Kelsey and Cullen.

Cullen; he has a pony tail, wears suit jackets, and speaks with a peculiar tone that sounds like an English accent, without the English accent. Does that make sense?

It doesn’t, go ahead and say so.

Cullen is an eccentric; he is strange, odd, and, well, I don’t know how else to describe him.

It’s not a bad thing, but I’m sure he knows he’s strange when he breaks out into song. They come from this old song-book that is tanned and weathered by time. You have to see it to believe it.

One morning, probably around six or seven, Victoria woke me up to move my car out of the driveway so she could leave for class. I stumble out of the bed and grab my keys. I think I was wearing clothes, but lets just pretend that I’m in my underwear for the sake of comedy.

So in my underwear, I slip on my shoes and open the front door. It’s dark out, and off to the the left-hand corner of my eye Cullen is standing there, suit jacket and all, hard at work.

I walk past him, half-asleep, “Hey Cullen” I say.

“Hey Burton,” he responds. We both speak to each other like everything was fine and dandy. I open my car door, turn on the car, back it out of the drive way, and park on the road.

I walk back towards the front door and see him working away, rustling leaves in his hands.

“See ya Cullen.”

“Later Burton.”

I walk back into the house and instantly fall back asleep.

Lets recap for a moment. Cullen is outside, I’m in my underwear, and it’s six in the morning.

Something isn’t adding up and I bring this up to Victoria. She is as baffled as I am, I decide to confront him on the issue.

I sit on the couch, and Cullen places the zong on the Waterloo Dark coaster, sitting down in a chair that I just don’t feel like describing right now.

“Cullen,” I say. “Were you outside this morning?”

“Indeed I was.”

“What were you doing?”

The way he put it made sense. “Well we don’t have any trees on our lawn and I thought it would be nice to have some leaves out front.”

“At six in the morning?”

“Yes.”

Cullen is confident when he speaks, even when he is speaking madness. I didn’t question him after that, my curiosity was satisfied and I picked the zong back up off the coaster.

Post game re-cap; Cullen, with his ponytail, suit jacket, at six in the morning, stealing peoples leaves and spreading them all over the lawn.

Later that day the guy who lives upstairs took some time to clean up the leaves. I wonder if he questioned where all the leaves came from.